


It Always Comes Around

by rushedwords



Series: Camp Enterprise [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Air Force, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boston, Distance, F/M, Love is complicated, M/M, Medical School, Misunderstandings, Not done baking, Pop Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:22:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3909385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushedwords/pseuds/rushedwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with finding the person you're meant to be with before you're full grown is that it can take years, a whole lot of heart ache and luck to finally get that happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spring 2013

**Spring 2013**  
He was going to be sick. All he had wanted to do when his alarm went off was pretend this morning didn’t exist. Except the universe was cruel and he wasn’t allowed to stay in a warm bed hating life with his boyfriend. Instead Leonard McCoy had to drag his ass out of bed and get across town to MGH for his research clerkship.   
  
By many standards it wasn’t a bad morning, but it was Black Monday so the usual standards didn’t exist. Through some will of God, he managed to get through the morning without insulting anyone too badly or looking like a complete idiot. Then it was just surviving the return trip to his apartment.   
  
At least the fine people of Boston had the sense to keep a wide berth on the scowl-faced man mumbling to himself on the ride back. Len trudged up the three flights of stairs with just enough energy left to throw his bag down by the door, and then himself across the sofa.   
  
God, what was he going to do with his life if he didn’t get matched? His mind couldn’t even fathom a reality where he didn’t place into a residency. Len needed to be a doctor. He needed to prove that he could do this on his own merit and he wasn’t just another in a long line of McCoys going into the family businesses. If he didn’t…  
  
“Bones, relax.”  
  
He lifted his head, squinting at Jim who had seemed to suddenly appear in their apartment. “Relax? This is my life, happening right now, completely without my control.” Surely there was something weird happening, but he couldn’t really focus on that. “There are 195 neurosurgery positions in the country. Last year something like 400 people applied for them, which means that almost half had to settle for different internship or subject themselves to the scramble. The  _scramble_ , Jim”  
  
Interviews were stressful enough, but to add having to scavenger around and take whatever was left? Leonard McCoy did not have the patience to deal with that.   
  
“Yes, relax,” said Jim crossing the room. He nudged Len to make space for him on the sofa. Len shifted without even really having to think about, just letting Jim in like had had for almost four years now – and that almost made him sick too. “Like you said this moment is entirely out of your control. Okay?”  
  
Len glared and Jim couldn’t help but smile back. “And you know what?” he continued. “You’re going to get matched. So don’t look at me like that. You are, you know why?”  
  
“Why?” He said moving into Jim to find just the right spot.   
  
“Because you rocked the first step. You have three publications with your name attached. And let’s not forget that you applied to 19 programs, and how many of those programs offered you interviews?”   
  
“Nineteen.”  
  
Jim placed a kiss to the side of Len’s head. “That’s right, all of them.”  
  
Of the nineteen interviews he was offered, he went to twelve, and even managed a few second looks. No matter if he felt good about his chances at a few of the places, it was still a numbers game.   
  
“That’s not a guarantee you’ll get matched, plenty of people have applications stronger than mine and oh God-” Len squeezed his eyes shut, feeling like he was going to sick all over again.   
  
“Only you’re not plenty of people. You’re Leonard Horatio McCoy, who could stand to improve his bedside manner, but I’ve met the doctors and the nurses you’ve done your clerkships with they love you.”  
  
Len craned his head to look up at Jim, studying that sincere look on his face. He honestly couldn’t imagine wanting to be any other place than right here. Right now, Jim Kirk was his rock.   
  
“But not more than I do.” Jim smiled again, closing the distance to press a brief kiss. As nice as it was to kiss Jim, Len wasn’t really in the mood for anything other than comfort and Jim seemed to get the message. “So, while we have time to kill, I want to find out what happened with the hatch.”  
  
Jim pulled away enough to turn on the television and queue up the latest episode of Lost. It was something that Jim declared as an imperative when it became clear that he and Bones were in the minority of people who hadn’t see the show at all. Convincing Len it was a good idea had taken some work, but now it was an easy sort of thing they could just kick back on the sofa and enjoy after a long day.   
  
By the time the alarm on his phone went off and Desmond running around the island naked, Len had almost forgotten what he was waiting for. Almost. But it really didn’t take long for the panic to set back in just where he left off.   
  
So, Jim just kissed him again. “Are you ready for this?”  
  
“No,” he said. Len wanted to shrink back down and disappear into the sofa, but Jim wouldn’t let him. He just handed Len the laptop over so he could log into his account, trying not to think about the site crashing as any sort of sign. For as long as he waited for this moment, it was weird to think that with one irrelevant click he would know.   
  
“I can’t do it. I can’t look. You have to do it for me.” It wasn’t exactly cowardice, but it wasn’t rational either. Len just thought he could better handle whatever news was coming if Jim said it.   
  
Under any other circumstance, Jim might have made a big fuss about it, wanting to build the tension, but he also wanted to have sex tonight. So, he just took the laptop back to make that click that would reveal Dr. Leonard McCoy’s fate.   
  
“Well?”  
  
Trying to remain as neutral as he could, he moved the laptop back to the coffee table. But try as he might there was still that crinkle at the side of his eyes that gave away the smile he was holding back. “You, my dear Bones, are going to get the chance to be a neurosurgeon.”  
  
Len was sure there were going to be more words after that. It was Jim Kirk and there were always more words. Only Len didn’t want to talk anymore.   
  
He threw his arms around Jim, pulling those lips into a bruising kiss as if it was Jim who just decided that today he got what he wanted. The vibrations of laughter in Jim’s throat died as his lips became preoccupied with other things.   
  
Of all the times they kissed in the five years spanning their relationship, every time it was different. This kiss was sloppy with a pinch of awkward, fueled by too much excitement, relief, and something that neither of them was ready to name yet. The throw pillows and blankets went in every direction as their clothes reached the point of annoyance.  
  
Len paused, pulling away with a curse slipping from his lips. Still a bit love-drunk, Jim tried to pull Len back onto him. He did have sort of a rhythm going. “What is it?”  
  
“Now, I have to wait until Thursday to know where I’m going to be spending the next seven years of my life.”  
  
Jim let out a long sigh, trying not to whine. “Worry about that later?” He reached up, pulling on Len’s collar to bring those lips fully back down to his.   
  
“Yeah, worry about that later,” he agreed kissing him again.   
  
Right then it didn’t matter that Jim probably had school or work, or that Len had articles to catch up on. The world didn’t exist outside of this sofa because if there were a world beyond this point, it would have been somehow different and they weren’t ready to face that yet.   
  
Compared to Monday, Thursday was easier. Of course it didn’t hurt that Jim was with him right from the start this time. Even if the matches would be posted to the web in a little more than an hour, Len sort of liked the tradition of Match Day.   
  
All of the medical students from his year were packed into Gordon Hall’s second-floor. It was almost like the administration had thrown an impromptu party. Len found himself chatting with people who hadn’t really seen since the introductory classes when they started. It was interesting to watch Jim talking with his classmates like he was one of them. It was even better to hear Jim’s varied responses when they asked him what his specialty was.   
  
Ahead of him, the first of his peers had opened their envelopes already overcome with tears of joy. It was weird to think that with one white envelope he and Jim were going to have to face the reality they accepted but never really talked about. Sure, Len might have looked at a few programs in Texas, knowing that masters in hand that was where Jim was headed, but that it was mostly symbolic. They didn’t expect to be in the same place four months from now, but it had been nice to pretend.   
  
Except now that pretending was going to be just a little bit more difficult.  
  
“All right, Bones, moment of truth,” said Jim pulling Len back into the moment. “But this time you’re going to have to do it yourself.”  
  
Len nodded, trying to push down the knot building in his stomach as he ripped open the envelope. He always had steady hands, but they were shaking now. And Jim was just there steady and sure watching him with a warm look of affection on his face.  
  
At least that was what it looked like on the surface. Underneath it all, Jim was freaking out a little too. The difference was he knew that now was not his time to lose it. This whole week he needed to keep it together for Bones. His moment would come later.   
  
“Emory,” said Len. “I got into Emory. I’m going home.”  
  
Jim wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. Suddenly he was standing there, watching Bones blink back tears and knowing he was doing the exact same thing.   
  
He was not supposed to be crying.   
  
Not wanting to draw any more attention to the tears, he threw his arms around Bones with murmurs of congratulations. Today he would give Bones everything he could, knowing later he would get it back when he needed it most.   
  
From that point, it was a beautiful swan song of their last weeks and months together. They both knew it was going to hurt. There would be days when the realization of the future hit them like an elephant gun. However, neither one was willing to quit while they still had time.   
  
They took turns breaking down, having moments of not wanting to get out of bed, and it worked. Most days were filled with the same things the weeks and years before carried, but the tone was different. Their world was changing and they were being forced to grow up.   
  
May arrived too soon and the boxes came out. The process of sorting four years worth of dinners, sleepovers, fights, and everything else began. Jim had never realized how much stuff he had, or even how much of his stuff were things proliferated from Bones. Even as they were starting to physically divide their things, they did it together.   
  
“So, I’ve been thinking.”  
  
Len stopped, looking up at Jim. “You thinking? Well, this ought to be good.”  
  
The fact that Jim rolled his eyes was only proof they had been living together for a long time. “Once I start flight school it’s a ten year commitment – ten years moving wherever the Air Force tells me and it’s really not all that different from what you’re doing, seven years working yourself crazy in Atlanta. So, I’ve been thinking we need a plan, or that I need a plan.” He corrected himself, not sure if he should be speaking for Bones anymore.  
  
“I want to be a test pilot.” This was nothing new. That had been the plan since Jim decided to join the AFROTC program once Don’t Act, Don’t Tell was repealed. Len still wasn’t sure how he felt about Jim joining the armed services, but it wasn’t really his place to ban him from anything. All he could do was be supportive and make sure Jim did his research. “That means for at least the next five years I have to focus entirely on the job if I want to be a strong candidate. Which means no time for dating, so I’m just going to put that whole part of my life on hold.”  
  
“ _You’re_  not going to have sex for the next five years?”  
  
Jim put the books he was holding into the box before moving over to invade Len’s space on the floor. “I didn’t say that. I just said that there won’t be any dating, and that all plans of family building are going to be on hold.”  
  
“I don’t get why you are telling me this.” Len was careful in his words, trying not to read too much into what was being said. The uncertainty of the future was something they mutually decided not to talk about. It was better for them both that way.   
  
“I’m just saying that in like seven to ten years if you haven’t found some nurse, doctor, hospital administrator, or whatever and settled down, we should meet up, go out for drinks, see what happens.”  
  
It was probably cheating to be saying those sorts of things while Jim settled in between Len’s legs with his hands settling in all of the right places. Only Bones didn’t really see the need to protest.   
  
“Seven years, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, seven years.”  
  
The conversation dissolved from there, turning into another round of ‘we haven’t had sex in this room this week.’  
  
From there it was graduation ceremonies, proud parents, and saying goodbye to friends with promises to keep in touch that were only half felt. Once the crowds were gone, the apartment fully packed up and the sub-letters ready to move in, it just left the two of them at Logan Airport.   
  
They wouldn’t cry. They didn’t say ‘I’ll love you forever’ or plead to not go. None of those things needed to be said then. They had been said more than enough for the four months prior. All they could do was hold the other just a little bit closer, not ready to let go. Probably never ready to let go.   
  
“I swear if you start singing a camp song right now I will hurt you.”  
  
Jim leaned his head back so he could smile at Bones – beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. “And by hurt do you mean break down and cry like you did both those summers?”  
  
“Shut up.” Len swatted Jim’s arm, chasing the hit with a discreet kiss.   
  
“Besides, I was actually going to go with a big moving speech about how we are meant to be some epic love story, spanning ages and miles, lives ruined, bloodshed. You know epic, because no one ever writes songs about the ones that come easy.”  
  
That caused Len to laugh, the tension in his body uncoiling a little. “Logan Echolls? Is that really how you see yourself?”  
  
“Come on, Bones, you totally love me, even if I was Logan Echolls. And I just said you were Veronica Mars, which is a total compliment by the way.”   
  
He still remembered that day he came home early to catch Jim watching Veronica Mars and acting like he had been caught watching porn. If he had been caught watching porn it probably would have gone a lot better. At least that would be more expected.   
  
“Alright, I’ll be Veronica Mars, but let’s go light on the lives ruined and bloodshed, okay?”  
  
“Hey, you’re the one going to be a doctor – the blood part is expected.”  
  
“I am a doctor.”  
  
“Right, Doctor Leonard McCoy.” Jim always said it in a way that just made it sound filthy. Not that Len was surprised any. That was what Jim was good at, turning just about everything into a come on. He would miss that, he would miss a lot of things, but if he were lucky – if they were both lucky, they would be too busy to notice.   
  
Still, seven years was a long time to wait.   
  
Cliché as it was, he was glad that they had both booked flights departing around the same time. It gave them every last moment that they could have. Jim had even offered to take the flight to Atlanta with Bones, but Bones insisted that it was foolish. Really he didn’t think he could do this twice. He needed to keep this wrapped up in Boston, especially if he was supposed to start the next chapter of his life in Atlanta.   
  
“We’ll always have Boston,” said Len quietly.   
  
“You give me crap about quoting Rob Thomas and you go all Casablanca on me?”  
  
“Bogart’s a classic, not even on the same level.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess so.”  
  
The two lapsed into a silence. They needed nothing more than the sure entwinement of their hands to fill the space. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but it was comfort enough.   
  
Not long after the gate attendant announced the flight boarding.   
  
“That’s me,” said Jim. He gave Len’s hand a squeeze before he stood up. “I’ll see you later.”  
  
“And here I was hoping for a Desmond quote.”  
  
Jim smiled swallowing back the fact he wanted to cry – especially seeing the same hurt in Len’s face too. “Maybe next time.” There was time for one last kiss, perfect and too brief, but it would do.   
  
“Yeah, next time.”   
  
It might be a lie, but for a moment watching Jim walk away, it was a beautiful one. 


	2. Summer 2016

**Three years later…**  
It was weird to be back here. Jim knew that when he joined the Air Force being deployed was a real possibility. There was just no way to prepare for the reality of it. At least there was Sam.   
  
Growing up their relationship had been strained, both brothers too busy trying to survive to really have time to be there for each other, but once out of their childhood it actually did get better. It didn’t hurt that their mom had managed to figure it out by then too.   
  
Coming off the plane, still in his uniform, Sam wasn’t the only person he wanted to see, but he was the best available option. For someone who got paid by the government to fly planes, Jim didn’t like airports. Not even the arrival gates with all of the people happy to see their loved ones. When he arrived somewhere, all he wanted to do was get somewhere with a good mattress and sleep.   
  
“Bro, you look like shit.” Sam slapped him on the shoulder, taking his carryon bag from Jim.   
  
“And you look old.”  
  
“Ah, but I still look better than you.” He pulled Jim into a hug, one fitted for an arrivals gate. “I’m glad you’re here.”  
  
Jim relaxed a little. “Show me that gratitude by feeding me and giving me a nice big bed to sleep in. And maybe a shower if you’re feeling generous.”  
  
“That I can do.” Sam led Jim toward the baggage carousel to get the rest of his luggage. “However, the shower is not at all optional.”   
  
The car ride from the airport was quiet, Jim trying to hold out for an actual bed. When they arrived, he was glad the kids were already in bed and the most Aurelan said was that she had a bed made up for him.  
  
“I would kiss you right now, if I didn’t think Sam would punch me.”  
  
“And it’d be the one time I’d actually land a decent punch too.”  
  
Jim waved them off collapsing across the bed. Maybe there would be a shower later. “Tomorrow,” he said, “tomorrow we’ll do the whole catch up on my life shit with pancakes, always pancakes and you know not swearing – little pinchers are around.”  
  
“Good night, Jim.”  
  
He slept through breakfast and lunch the next day. Jim must have been more tired than he realized. Every now and then he would wake to hear laughter somewhere else in the house. Once or twice he seriously considered getting up, but he had the a few weeks before he needed to report to base and there would be time later to play with his nephews later.   
  
Jim did eventually make it out bed and started to fulfill those promises he made earlier.   
  
“You’ll never guess who I ran into the other day.”  
  
Jim was sitting on the sofa, flipping through the different sports games when Sam dropped down beside him. He didn’t even acknowledge his brother.   
  
“What, c’mon Jim, you’re not going to guess?”  
  
“You said I would ‘never guess.’”  
  
“Fine. Don’t play.”  
  
It really wasn’t curiosity. He just wanted Sam to stop pouting worse than his kid. Or at least that was what he told himself. “Jonathan Archer?”  
  
Sam grinned. “And so very close, Leonard McCoy actually.” Jim was sure Sam was expecting him to be surprised. That was the expected reaction. They both lived in the Greater Atlanta area and they were both doctors – even if Sam was just the PhD sort. “I was asked to give a presentation for the staff at Grady on my research. Afterward he came over and introduced myself, asked me if I there was any chance I was related to Jim Kirk.”  
  
“What did you say?” He asked, not amused at how much pleasure Sam was getting from this story.  
  
“What did I say? You dated this guy, for what, five years and he didn’t know you had a brother?”  
  
Jim rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you and I were talking back then and Kirk isn’t a one of a kind name.” He ignored the fact that he and Sam looked enough alike they could probably pass for fraternal twins if it wasn’t for the age difference. “And you still didn’t answer my question.”   
  
“I told him the truth. I have some punk kid brother who had just come home from a tour of duty in the Middle East and yes, his name was Jim.”  
  
“You did what?”  
  
“I gave him your number too.”  
  
“I hate you.” Jim pressed back against the sofa. This was not what he wanted to deal with. He was barely dealing with being back in the States, but having to face Bones again? That just wasn’t fair.   
  
So, Jim did the manly and mature thing. He spent the next couple of days convincing himself that Bones wasn’t going to call. He was a busy doctor and aside from a few e-mails or Facebook posts they hadn't really spoke much in the past three years. Except it was only a matter of time. They were in the same city again and it just felt like a waste to not get to see each other.   
  
It was still early when the silence was broken with an unassuming text message.

>   
>  **Bones:**  So I heard you’re in town. 
> 
> **Bones:** This is McCoy. Leonard McCoy.
> 
> **Jim Kirk:**  I don’t know any Leonard McCoys
> 
> **Jim Kirk:**  A Bones maybe?
> 
> **Bones:**  You never change.
> 
> **Jim Kirk:**  Where would the fun in that be?
> 
> **Bones:**  I have today off. Want to grab coffee or something to eat?
> 
> **Jim Kirk:**  Sure, where do you have in mind?
> 
> **Bones:**  I’ll come pick you up.

  
He texted Bones the address. Jim tried not to think too much about it until the doorbell rang about an hour later. Nothing could have prepared him this. He was stuck standing there, unsure how to respond.   
  
“Hey,” he said rather pathetically.  
  
Jim felt like a fool, barefoot in a pair of sweats and an MIT shirt while Bones looked like _that_. It just wasn’t fair that a man could take otherwise ordinary black trousers and a light blue button up and look that good. He suspected it had something to do with the carefully undone top buttons, revealing just a peak of chest hair, and the floppy hair on his head. It looked like Bones had just had sex and threw on whatever clothes closest to him.   
  
And he really should not be thinking about sex in this close proximity of Bones without sex being an immediate next step.   
  
“Hey.” Bones echoed back, stepping a bit too close. Maybe he got that mental message too. “Your brother here?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“The wife? Kids?”  
  
“All gone for the weekend.” He barely squeaked the words out of his suddenly dry throat.   
  
“Good,” he said. What happened next gave Jim no space to say or even think of anything other than the feeling of Bones’s lips on his. There were hands everywhere as they stumbled further back into the house, knocking over a few picture frames as they went.   
  
This was not the greeting he was expecting, but it might have just been the one he wanted.   
  
“This isn’t coffee.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Some part of his head, the more logical part that was quickly losing ground here told him to slow down, that they shouldn’t just be jumping into things. Jim wasn’t whole and he couldn’t do that to Bones, but right now he wanted to be a little bit selfish.  
  
So, Jim pushed back, giving as much as he got. He slammed Bones hard into the wall with a bruising kiss. Three years of frustration on top of six months at war coming out all at once and Bones just took it so pretty.   
  
What followed wasn’t making love, or any other silly euphemism that might be used. It was sex, plain, dirty, and just right. There were new lines cut into their bodies, Jim a bit more filled out, stronger with new scars, but Bones touched him like he knew him and that was all that mattered.   
  
They near destroyed the entrance hall, leaving a trail of clothes and curse words behind them on the way to the guest room. The bed wasn’t anything more than a witness to their frantic sex on the floor beside it after they tripped.   
  
Only when exhausted and they finally made it up into the bed did any hint of gentleness surface. Panting in unison, the hands were softer now, no longer demanding, but just taking a few fragile seconds to explore.  
  
“Will you do me a favor?” said Bones after a moment, gaze directed at the ceiling.  
  
“I don’t know. You might have to owe me one.”  
  
Len rolled his eyes, pointedly not engaging that comment. He had learned long ago that with Jim it was better never to keep score because he never won and really losing had never been that bad anyway. “I need a date for some bullshit hospital event tomorrow night.”  
  
Jim rolled over in the bed, looking over at Bones, studying the lines on his face. It was strange to see how much three years could change a person. Sentimental as his thoughts were, those were not things he could say out loud, not when he wasn’t supposed to get attached. There was a plan after all.  
  
“Here I thought you were supposed to get the guy to dress up, feed him, get him drunk, and then fuck him senseless.”  
  
“Jim.”  
  
He cracked a smile, really just wanting to hear his name said like that. “But Bones, you really didn’t give me any time to figure out what I’m going to wear!”  
  
“I’m sure Sam will have something or we’ll find you something of mine that would fit.” Whatever else might have been said was lost to the sound of his pager going off. “And that would probably Mrs. Stevenson.” Len reached over to grab the pager and double check the message. “I’ll text you my address with directions.”  
  
As he spoke, Len was already on the move. His motions a bit tender, but with determination as he collected his clothes.   
  
After he left, Jim laid back in the bed. He liked the idea of borrowing Bones’s clothes more than he should. Given how much trouble a Harvard hoodie had stupidly caused him in college, it should have been the opposite, but it never was.   
  
It turned out that the only thing better than Jim Kirk in a suit was Jim Kirk in one of McCoy’s. The way the suit was just a little too loose around the shoulders left just the right amount to the imagination. Len was glad that he had won the battle of the tie, convincing Jim to wear a nice blue one while he went without.   
  
The kid was a natural, not that he would expect anything less. Len knew that really what it came down to was the irresistible Kirk charm. No one had a chance and that included him. Len gave up trying to resist it long ego and instead worked to manage Kirk’s ego. So, the kid could never know that Len liked to watch Jim in his element.   
  
“So, Dr. McCoy who is the man you brought with you?” He looked over to see Dr. Martin. He liked her. She really wasn’t a bad person or particularly nosey person. She was just an older attending who liked to meddle, seeming to have an opinion on everything.  
  
“That’s Jim Kirk. He is an old friend of mine from when I was at Harvard.” It wasn’t quite the truth, but it was the closest she was going to get.   
  
“An old friend who has been having eye sex with you all night?”  
  
Were he drinking anything at that moment, he might have choked. Thankfully for his dignity and his future at Emory he was spared.   
  
He honestly wasn’t sure why he brought Jim. Len had no clue where they stood. At the very least it gave his coworkers something else to harass him about instead of his recent and slightly too public break up.   
  
Of course that was when she arrived.   
  
Jocelyn Darnell would always be his first love. Two years older than him, they had grown up together. Their lives were filled with big wheel bicycles, summer time sprinklers, and more stolen cookies than he cared to count. She had broken his heart when they were fourteen and he had finally worked up the courage to ask her to the end of year school dance and she chose that moment to introduce her new boyfriend – Clay Treadway.  
  
And right now was like high school all over again. Jocelyn was dressed in a simple black dress, her hair pinned up, with vivid red shoes that matched the details on Clay’s tie. They had matching couple outfits.   
  
“I need another drink,” he said to no one. Making his way back through the crowd, he hoped that after a few drinks he wouldn’t feel so sick every time he looked at her with Clay.   
  
Len found a nice spot by the bar, able to watch over the crowd and see who was talking to whom. Every time he swept the crowd for Jim, he would catch glimmers of Joce and Clay in various embraces, eyes only for each other, or kissing in public like teenagers.   
  
With a long sigh, he turned back to get a refill on his drink. He was approaching more drinks than he should allow himself at a work related function, but if he had to be here he was going to need it.   
  
“Len!” He froze hearing his name said in that excited sort of tone that could only belong to Jocelyn. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”  
  
He took a deep breath. It was hard to remember that he and Jocelyn were friends – friends who had let sex mess everything. “It was required of any staff not on the schedule for tonight.” And he had tried to get out of it, trolling for surgeries most of the afternoon, but he wasn’t that lucky.  
  
She smiled over at him. “You remember Clay, right?”   
  
At least she was trying, not that it made it easier. Certainly not with that question being asked. How could he forget the great Clay Treadway? “It’s good to see you again.”   
  
Len was sure if he were wearing a tie right now, he would be suffocating under the weight of this conversation. Jocelyn didn’t seem to want to drop it like she had something to prove to him. Luckily, sans tie he just felt like he was about to gag on his drink at any moment as he was forced to hear them recount how he had surprised Jocelyn with a nice picnic a week ago that rekindled their romance. Len was mostly trying not to do the math. He and Jocelyn hadn’t been broken up that long.  
  
“Bones!” Finally Jim Kirk decided to show his face again. He settled in right next to Len like he belonged there. “Who do we have here?”  
  
Len introduced them. He tried not to be too smug at the dirty look Jocelyn tried to cover when he shared the vague details of his and Jim’s relationship. And Jim, bless his heart, following in step plucked Len’s glass from his hand, swirling the liquid before taking a sip. Only he didn’t just take a sip, he was sure that his lips brushed the same part that Len’s did.  
  
“That’s good,” he said. Jim set the empty glass down on the bar behind them. Turning back around he stole a kiss from Len, pleased that he was able to shock all of them in one go. “I like this song, we should dance.”  
  
And just like that Len was saved. It came with a cost, but if Jim wanted to dance, well, they were going to dance.  
  
The night got better. It started to feel like they were back in their life in Boston. It made Len start to want that again – distance and careers be damned. Then Jim said those magic words, “Let’s get out of here.”  
  
With how much Len had to drink, Jim volunteered to drive. They were content to just sit in silence on the ride back, not needing to say anything.  
  
For the past couple of lights, Jim had watched Bones in his peripheral head lolling against the headrest.  
  
“Hey, you’re not going to fall asleep on me?”  
  
“What?” He said forcing himself into something that looked more like waking. “No, it’s just that I’m lucky if I get six solid hours of sleep a week. By third year you learn to sleep whenever you can.”   
  
Even if his voice sounded gruff and full of grumble, Jim wasn’t fooled by it.   
  
“You’re a masochist, you know that?”  
  
“Of course I am. I mean I did fall in love with you.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“You’re nothing but trouble.”  
  
“Yeah, but you love that too.”  
  
The words were exchanged so quickly, neither of them realized what was hanging until it got quiet again. A few minutes later, the car came to a stop.   
  
“Why are we at your brother’s place? Jim, you know I’m in no shape to drive.”  
  
Turning off the car and unclipping his belt, Jim twisted in his seat to face Bones. “I wasn’t planning on letting you drive anywhere.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Jim flashed him a big smile. He got out of the car with far too much energy and walked Len inside the house. Unlike the other day it was more subdued now. It was tired, sure hands, reaching out to touch and maintain contact without any sort of frenzy.   
  
“Let me grab some water. You remember where the room is?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” said Len heading down the hall. Tired as he was now and as distracted as had been when he was here last, the room was different. All of the little things that made it Jim’s were packed away into a large suitcase unzipped on the floor.   
  
On the top of the pile of things was a framed photo of the pair of them from the traditional last week of Black Tie dinner. He ran his fingers over the faces in the frame – they both looked so young.   
  
“Jim, why are all your things packed up?”  
  
“Well, I have to report to base tomorrow,” said Jim coming back in the room with two glasses of water.   
  
Len downed the glass of water, needing time to process information. “You’re leaving?”  
  
“Yeah, I mentioned it earlier. I’m just on leave right now.” Sensing the change in mood, Jim directed Bones to the bed. “C’mon you look dead on your feet. Time to put all good little doctors to bed.”   
  
Bones was on automatic right now. It all just hurt again. So he let Jim take off his shoes and then his socks. He didn’t put up a fuss as Jim tenderly rubbed each foot. The rest of his clothes down to his briefs went in a similar gentle manner.   
  
In contrast, Jim just shucked off his clothes and joined Bones in bed. “Just need a quick nap, okay?” Although his words were slurred with a yawn, Jim understood.  
  
He pressed a kiss into the side of his head, smiling as Bones moved into him. His hand carded through Bones’s hair, just content to watch the other man fall asleep.   
  
Len woke up the next morning to the sunlight streaming through the window and an empty bed. Those two things alone weren’t really anything out of the ordinary. The foreign bed didn’t even throw him off. What did was the empty space next to him.   
  
“Jim?” He called out, sitting up. His head felt like his brain had been dissected. Reaching for the nightstand, he found a full glass of water and some Tylenol. “Thank God.” He popped the drugs and swallowed down all the water.   
  
“Huh.” All of Jim’s things were gone, everything except for a very familiar crimson hoodie with a small piece of paper on top on the dresser.   
  
Dragging himself out of bed, he padded across the room to see what Jim had left him. On top of the hoodie wasn’t a piece of paper, but a copy of the picture of them from the Black Tie dinner with a Post It attached.

> Bones –  
>  Sorry I didn’t wake you. I had an early flight and you looked like you needed the sleep.
> 
> See you in another life, brother.
> 
> xx Jim

  
Before he had time to do more than read it once, his pager went off.   
  
“Damn it!”


	3. Fall 2018

**Two years later...**

This was good. His life was good. Jim Kirk had finally settled into a sort of routine. Even with the grueling hours that left him exhausted, it also energized him. Not to mention  _this._  Every day he got to come home to an apartment filled with the promises of dinner and company that was enough to make him run up the two flights of stairs no matter how tired he was.   
  
“Honey, I’m home!” He called out, silly smile on his face. Jim took off his jacket, careful to hang it up in the closet and place his boots by the door before stopping by the kitchen.   
  
Now, that was a sight to see.   
  
It was weird to think he actually missed domesticity in the years between. But seeing Carol at the island chopping up vegetables for dinner, it was good.   
  
“Jim,” she said looking up at him. It wasn’t quite a smile on her face, but it wasn’t displeasure either. Jim wasn’t the only one with long days.   
  
"Carol," he responded moving in to kiss her in a more appropriate greeting. “Here, let me help with that.”   
  
After a quick scrub of his hands he took up the vegetable chopping duties where Carol left off. They fell into their same easy routine. Jim appreciated that they didn’t always have to fill the silence with empty questions about their days when the fact was neither was in much of a position to divulge much information.   
  
"Did you remember the wine?"   
  
“Oh.” It was always the seemingly harmless questions that got him. “I knew there was something I forgot. I can just run back out now and pick some up."  
  
"Don't bother." If Jim could have become stiller he would have. Instead he set the knife down, looking up at her. It was only then that Jim really saw her. She was tired and not in the way he might be. Carol sighed, her whole body heaving in the process. “I knew you’d forget, so I picked some up earlier when you said you’d be home late. Again.”  
  
He wasn’t sure that a simple sorry was going to cover it this time. Not it would stop him from apologizing with a silent remorseful smile. “Things have just been so busy at the base…” Jim started, but never finished because anything he was going to say, wasn’t going to be true and he didn’t need to add lying to his offenses.   
  
The silence was no longer comfortable, but suffocating. In his mind he was trying to figure out when the rules changed on him. He wouldn’t have much time to consider that.   
  
"I don't think I can do this anymore."  
  
“Can’t do what anymore?” His fragile world hung in the balance now because he and Carol were good. She was good for him. They worked. They had to work.   
  
“Us.” She transferred the chicken onto serving plates, still going through the motions of dinner. “I can’t do us anymore.”  
  
Jim stopped setting the table and came around the island. “Look, if this is about the wine…”  
  
“It’s not about the wine, Jim.” The exhale that followed said more than her words.  
  
"Carol, what are you trying to say?” Not that she needed to say anything, the fact that she moved away from his touch said everything he needed and didn’t want to hear.   
  
She leaned back against the counter, not looking him in the eye. “I’m saying that we live in two entirely differently worlds. Your head is up in the clouds and I'm always right here, waiting for you to get back, and it’s just not working."  
  
He heard the words, but he didn’t see how that was a problem. They were both busy in the same sort of way that he and Bones had both been busy back in Boston. Although perhaps the thought of Bones making his heart hurt more than what was happening now was the real problem.  
  
Food and doctors – they were nothing but pain.  
  
“Did the NIH reject your proposal?"   
  
“No. Actually, they accepted my proposal along with the funding requests. I just – look, Jim, I love you, really I do, but this isn’t okay.” His heart still fluttered with that nervous anxiety when someone said those words to him. “We’re not okay. We haven’t been okay in a while and I should have left before, I probably shouldn’t have even agreed to move in with you and… It’s just over.”  
  
They stood there a moment longer, just looking at each other, those three words weighing heavily between them. Jim didn’t know what came next, didn’t know where to go from here. It wasn’t anything like this with Bones, that was sort of a mutual parting and this just left him speechless.   
  
“So, let’s just have dinner and I’ll have my stuff gone by the time you come back from your trip.”  
  
That didn’t seem to make it better, but it was a way to move forward. Maybe tomorrow he would be able to deal with this, but right now, he was just running on automatic. Too tired to do the manly thing and storm out, dinner didn’t sound like a bad thing.   
  
For as much as the world would throw at him, it always gave him a way to cope with it too. The trip out to California for the Camp Enterprise ten-year reunion came at the best possible moment.   
  
Camp was always somewhere safe, a place where he could go to heal and get stronger. It had saved him as a child. He just hoped that it could fix him now too.   
  
Except this time that safe place was also going to mean facing his past again. It was a past that included Bones, who he hadn’t been able to talk to since leaving him at Sam’s house that morning. And was torn between wanting Bones to be there and hoping that he wouldn’t have the time.   
  
The reunion wasn’t even something that he expected to happen. Every summer someone brought up the idea, but the summer of 2008 had been different in so many ways. And held onto that moment where they made the decision with a weird sort of hope and fascination.   
  
_He and Bones were on the steps of Old Lodge, waiting for the rest of the staff to arrive for the meeting. The last batch of campers was only a few hours away from arriving. Jim sprawled out across the porch, his head carelessly in Bones’s lap, not a care in the world.  
  
Bones had amazed him. While he would often hear the other man compare him to a force of nature, Jim knew that this still growing thing with Bones would forever change his life.   
  
“Penny for your thoughts,” said Jim. “Or you know, lots of pennies because obviously your thoughts are worth way more than a penny.”  
  
Len shrugged. “Just thinking about how strange this summer has been.”  
  
“Good strange?”  
  
If not for the vulnerability unspoken in that question, Len might have laughed. Instead he simply leant down and pressed a kiss to Jim’s forward. “Definitely good strange,” he said his voice low, face only inches away from Jim’s wishing, once more, for some place more private.  
  
“Wowee, look at the two of you,” said Red. She came running up the path with Pasha and Star close behind.   
  
Jim just smiled at the scowl setting deeper on Bones’s face. “See, Bones, they totally know you are as bad as me, deny it as you like, but we’re all on to you.” That earned him a spectacular eye roll and a shove hard enough to dislodge him from his comfortable spot.   
  
The rest of the counselors arrived shortly thereafter.   
  
“I can’t believe this is the last week of camp,” said Sistine squeezing in to sit on the other side of Len.   
  
Po looked over at her, his brow carefully arched. “I fail to see why. Were you not aware that the summer was eight sessions and last week concluded our seventh?”  
  
In front of him, just leaning on his legs for support, Star laughed. “I think what Sistine means is that she is going to miss this place. I know I am.”  
  
“Hey,” said Jim, “The great thing about camp is that it’s always here.”  
  
From the other end of the porch Flyboy grumbled. “Except that not all of us are coming back next summer because some of us need to find real, full-time jobs.” ‘And be adults’ was the part that went unspoken, but not unheard.  
  
“This is totally a real job!” Jim jumped in before anyone else could say otherwise.  
  
“You can’t just-”  
  
“Hey!” said Sistine knowing that this conversation was not going anywhere productive. “We should promise that in ten years we’ll meet again, have some sort of reunion, see the sort of people we’ve become.”  
  
Jim shifted his glare over to Sistine, softening it a bit. “Ten years is a long time,” he said carefully. Jim Kirk was lucky he planned on a few months ahead. A decade from now felt like a lifetime.  
  
“I think it’s a great idea, Sistine.” The others agreed, starting to make jokes about what time they should meet. It was almost enough for Jim to miss the fact that Bones hadn’t said anything.  
  
“Alright, Bones, what do you say?”  
  
The truth was that he couldn’t say no to those blue eyes and Jim Kirk knew it. “Yeah, sure, you send me the invite and I’ll be there.”_  
  
Of course Sistine would go through with it, finding just the right weekend where they could all get away without any excuse.   
  
Jim had arrived well before the others, content to explore the true ghost town of a summer camp in November. It also meant that he could find a prime viewing location to see everyone else arrive.   
  
Sitting on the small roof above the porch of Old Lodge he watched another rental car pull in. The person sat in the car a long while until Christine came out to greet him.   
  
“Leonard McCoy,” she said leaning down on the window ledge of the car door. She pushed her sunglasses up. “Here I was thinking you were going to make me drive all the way back out to San Francisco to drag your sorry ass here.”  
  
He laughed and Jim couldn’t help but smile as that sound traveled up to him. Grumpy Guard Bones totally had a great big camp smile.   
  
“I almost didn’t make it, but I was afraid of your wrath.”  
  
“As you should be.” She took a step back, so she could pull open the door and drag him out. “Come on, Len, daylight’s wasting.”  
  
The woman could be a monster, but she always meant well. Once Len was free from the confines of the car, Christine pulled him into a hug, which he returned easily.  
  
He sighed, relaxing into it. “Repeat it to anyone else, and I’ll say you’re lying, but it is honestly good to see you again.”  
  
Christine pulled back, the smile on her face softening a bit as she caught his eye. “You doing okay?”   
  
“Yeah,” he said shaking his head. “It’s just sixth year. I’m still working on my research and am just busy, you know how it is.”  
  
It wasn’t the answer she had wanted, but it was the one she expected. “Not yelling at any nurses, are you?”  
  
“Only the ones that deserve it.” That earned him a swat, but he needed that to jar him out of whatever emotional overload he was spiraling into. “But I mostly save it for the interns or med students, because they always deserve it. God, I can’t ever imagine being that young.”  
  
“That’s because you never were.”  
  
Trying to hide his amusement, Len turned to pull his sunglasses from the car and shut the door behind him. “Thanks,” he said dryly.  
  
“You know I say it with love.”  
  
“Love and safe in the knowledge that you work at UCLA and I’m out at Emory, never the two shall meet.”  
  
“I wouldn’t say ‘never.’ I mean I got you here.”   
  
Christine looked the same and Bones…well, Bones just looked good, even with his visible discomfort and clothes that didn’t quite fit the setting.   
  
“Almost everyone is here already,” she continued. “We don’t have anything fancy planned, just gathering in the Old Lodge for now and later Sulu agreed to man the camp fire for the cook out.”  
  
“Is –” He started to ask, but stopped because it wasn’t really a question that needed to be asked. Of course he was here. Whatever else Jim Kirk was, he lived for this place for most of his life and wouldn’t miss any chance to come back.   
  
“Yeah, he’s been here all day.” She looped her arm around Len’s and escorted him toward the Old Lodge. “But he’s mostly been moping around New South Wales and it’s just…weird.”  
  
Len sighed, feeling that tension mount back up. This was going to be hard enough without whatever else Jim was bringing to it.   
  
“Great.”  
  
Despite Len’s reservations, it was actually nice to see everyone again. It was surprising to see how many of the little subgroups from camp still existed. Spock, Nyota, and Gaila were world-traveling anthropologists. And after Sulu finished his service with the Reserves, he moved into a house with Riley, Chekov and their significant others in Mountain View, CA to attend school while the others worked for Google.   
  
In the epic camp friendships or more-ships, he and Jim were the only ones who didn’t seem to have a happy ending. Even the boathouse incident between Sulu and Christine left them with a funny story to tell later despite not being together anymore.  
  
Were he a poet and not a doctor, he might have said his relationship with Jim didn’t have an end, just an ellipsis or an intermission because it didn’t feel over. Certainly not when Jim was looking at him.   
  
Across the blazing campfire, casting shadows and hiding the lines the years gave, Jim Kirk was gorgeous. This wasn’t a new revelation, or really anything ground breaking at all. It was an undeniable fact of the universe that Jim Kirk was good looking, he knew, and so did anyone who spared him so much as a glance. The surprise came in the fact that Len wanted him. He wanted to take the broken pieces just glued and taped together and make them whole.  
  
“You know, I think you are the one that lost your great big camp smile,” said Len taking a seat next to Jim and handing him a beer. As far as the life of Jim Kirk was concerned, Leonard McCoy never had a chance.   
  
“Camp Enterprise,” said Jim. “Man, that was a lifetime ago.”  
  
Len had at least expected some sort of smile, because this was Jim Kirk and this place was his home. However, maybe this was worse than he knew. So, he simply nudged Jim’s shoulder, prompting him to share without having to say it.   
  
It was a long moment of silence between them, filled by the crackling fire and the low murmur of people lost in their own conversations.   
  
“I didn’t stick to the plan.”   
  
“The plan?”   
  
“You know The Plan,” said Jim. The unnecessary capitals were clear in his voice. “The one where I sign up, get into pilot school, apply to be a test pilot, and once I have that start worrying about finding a wi- a life partner, the house, the dog, the kids. And the really messed up thing is that when I met her, Carol liked that I had a plan because she had a plan too.” He laughed. It was the same self-deprecating laugh he used to keep the world at bay. Len wasn’t sure when he became a part of the world as it were, but he didn’t like it very much.  
  
“But by the end, I was ‘too busy’ with work and never home enough…” Jim trailed off, shaking his head. “And yeah, I clearly should have just stuck to The Plan.”  
  
Jim was just grown just enough to break. The kid wore his heart on his sleeve, you just need to know how to look for it, and of course he was going to get hurt. That was part of growing up.   
  
“You know I never thought that was a very good plan.”  
  
Jim turned, glaring at him then. “You think you might have mentioned that, I don’t know, like five years ago?”  
  
In response Len shrugged. “It wasn’t my place. Besides, what was I going to do? Ask you to follow me to Atlanta? Trust me, Jim, my residency makes med school look like I had plenty of free time.”  
  
“You could have.” The words were quiet, but heavy. Jim wouldn’t have gone, plan or no plan, because he wouldn’t have been content to simply follow, but he might have liked to been asked.   
  
Except asking that question and to have to face the answer would have been too much.  
  
“And get to miss out on a life time of awkward meetings?” He might not have been able to ask that question before, but Len never believed he would ever be free of Jim. He never wanted to be.  
  
Jim smiled over at him. “Just embrace the awkward, you know you like it.”  
  
“I get enough awkward at work. Hospitals aren’t that different from summer camp.”  
  
“Doctors having sex in the on-call room all the time?”  
  
“Oh yeah and my new best friend at work is an internist who gets called girls names and frequently stares off into space for his crazy daydreams and-”  
  
“Alright, I get it. I shouldn’t believe what I see on television.”  
  
The pair fell quiet for a moment, staring into the crackling fire in front of them. It was soothing, peaceful. It was almost like things weren’t changing again.   
  
“I really think it could have worked for me and Carol. We were good. We knew what we wanted and our lives fit.” Jim took a pull from his bottle, gaze set on the fire in front of him. “And I think that I was happy.”  
  
“Just because you were happy doesn’t mean you get to keep it. Hell, life’s a bitch, full of complications and plans that don’t ever quite work.”   
  
Jim turned to look at him. “Are you happy?” Even with the shadows flickering across his face and the distance the years made, Len could still read him. And he couldn’t help feel that Jim might also be talking about what they were, are, and might even possibly one day be again.  
  
“I’m not unhappy, Jim, most days that’s the best I can hope for. I’m doing what I love, but my family is a bit crazy right now. I recently found out I have a daughter and I think that being a father might make me happy.”  
  
Len watched Jim eyes go wide, not sure if he said too much. “Shit, you have a kid?”  
  
“I’m not exactly some blushing virgin or a monk for that matter. You should know that.”  
  
“I know,” he said, flushing a little at all of those mornings and nights stole feeling safe in their bed. “It’s just where do you have the time? I mean it’s a kid they don’t just suddenly appear. Who’s the mother? Do I know her? Are you-”  
  
Just as his voice started to crack on the last unfinished question, Len held up his hand to stop him “Jocelyn. Jocelyn is the mother.”  
  
“You mean Jocelyn-Jocelyn, who like totally broke your heart and I had to swoop in and save you?”  
  
“Yes, that Jocelyn. She was pregnant at the time and didn’t know. You do know how that works.”   
  
Jim punched him on the shoulder for being a bit of an ass. “You have like a big kid.”  
  
“She’s almost two years old.”  
  
“Are you pissed? I would be pissed, to have a kid and not know.”  
  
All he could do was shrug. “Like you said, it’s not like I had the time. Jocelyn and I didn’t exactly end it on good terms, and well, she wanted to be with Clay.”  
  
“So, what, Clay’s out of the picture and now she’s trying to get you back?”  
  
“Jim.” His life felt just a little bit more exhausting now. “Let’s not talk about that, alright? It’s all just complicated and I’m glad to be away from it. I mean, I’m not going to stop being a father, but right now I’m just worried about being a doctor, everything else has to come after those two.” And he honestly wasn’t sure how he felt about Jocelyn anymore, not when Jim was sitting right next to him.   
  
“Right plans,” said Jim sounding defeated again.   
  
They were circling and Len wasn’t going to have to that. “Hey, let’s get out of here.”  
  
“And go where?”  
  
“Oh no, you don’t get to know. You just have to trust me.” He stood up, offering a hand to Jim. “It will be just like that spring break.”  
  
“You were so grumpy,” said Jim. He took Len’s hand and stood up. “I had to promise you no less than three mind blowing blow jobs until you agreed to give me four days of your spring break, which is still actually meant for breaking because in the real world you don’t get spring break. And let the record show that not only did I fulfill that promise, but you also had a great time.”  
  
Len nudged his shoulder again as they started walking off. “You, the woods, a tent, fishing – you don’t really need much else than that.”  
  
He wasn’t going to promise blowjobs, mind blowing or otherwise, because he knew he didn’t need to. Jim didn’t even need to back then, but he wasn’t about to complain. Len grabbed a flashlight from the pile as they walked away from the fire circle. It wasn’t a long walk around the lake. Neither of them really talking just listening to the chirps and rustles around them the flash light off because Jim had insisted it wasn’t that dark.   
  
“So, day camp, huh?” Jim asked when they stopped a few feet away from the challenge course.   
  
“You got a problem with that?”  
  
“Nah, I just never pegged you for a romantic.” Len glared at him and even without a flashlight Jim could see that expression. “Okay, that’s a lie, I knew the second I met you and said your horrible real name that underneath the sarcasm and the snark was something more.”  
  
“But then you gave me a new name.” He took a step closer to Jim, needing to be closer to him especially in this place.  
  
They had shared their first kiss here. At the time they were nothing more than two boys parading as young men, still lost. And in many ways they were still those boys parading as men, only now those men now had new letters attached to their names – Doctor McCoy and Lieutenant Kirk.   
  
Except neither of those people were here right now.  
  
“Bones.”   
  
So close together, Len felt that one word in a puff of air against his face. All he could do was struggle to find an appropriate response and when none came he settled on, “Jim” and then “Captain.” Only he started the “Cap” and never had the space to speak the “tain” because Jim’s lips were on his.   
  
Jim was kissing him, or maybe he was kissing Jim. Not that it mattered they were kissing each other, arms everywhere, moving like they had never stopped doing this. And maybe they shouldn’t ever stopped.   
  
Tonight there would be no campers to worry about. No staff to overhear them. Or anything else that could distract them. Tonight it was just them. And Len was sure the nineteen-year-old version of Jim that still existed was singing.   
  
_Just a boy and a boy in a little canoe with the moon hanging all around._


	4. Interlude

He missed this. He had actually forgotten how much he missed this until they woke up together. Even sprawled awkwardly on the solid wood of a platform tent, they still fit together. Jim smiled, burrowing further into Bones who made an excellent pillow.   
  
This was what was missing with Carol. With her he felt like he constantly needed to be running off somewhere, but with Bones he could just be.   
  
Then a very loud ‘hem hem’ disrupted their little utopia.   
  
Both men craned their necks to see Christopher Pike standing at the step to the platform tent. “Morning Gopher,” Jim managed blearily, refusing to let Bones move even a little let.   
  
Conceding defeat, Bones just groaned some sort of greeting.   
  
“Don’t you remember what the camp director said?”  
  
“Well, technically we’re not campers and this isn’t a bed. Also, not camp season.”  
  
“No, what you are is trouble, and going to be late.” That caused Jim to jerk upward looking for his phone to check the time. The peace of their tent was broken and gone now. “Hop to it boys.” Pike gave them a cheeky wave before leaving.   
  
“What just happened?”  
  
“Less talking, more moving,” said Jim wigging back into his jeans. “I have a flight I need to catch and you’re going to drive me to the airport.”  
  
Bones groaned again. While he was used to operating on little sleep, that was out of necessity. Right now his body told him he didn’t have anywhere to be. It might not have been an ideal bed, but sleep was sleep and the company was good. “This is way too many words before coffee.”   
  
“Clothes, then car, and I’ll buy you coffee on the way. Come on!”  
  
It was a scramble to make it back to the parking lot. Followed by a ride to San Francisco airport that Len didn’t really know what to make of until Jim was getting out. The coffee really hadn’t helped anything.   
  
“I still have some things to sort through.” He said undoing his seat belt. “Carol just really left me in sort of a…place.” Jim paused scratching his head, not sure it had ever been this awkward before. “But it is good to see you again, Len. Real good.”  
  
It was stupid because he knew better. Their lives were in different places, but just for a moment Len had opened his heart and hoped that maybe this time it would work. Only the wounds were open again, scabs pulled off and bleeding, making the scars deeper.  
  
So, there was really only one thing to do.   
  
“I think I’m going to try again with Jocelyn.” It was the only way to stitch the torn skin back together. “I mean Joanna is great. You should see her, and I want to be there for her.”  
  
“That’s great, Bones,” he said at a complete loss. There was no way he could compete against a kid. Jim didn’t even want to. He had thought things were going to end on a good note, but instead he was just another Captain Ed Murphy. If there is any way to do it wrong, he would. “With how you take on everything else, I’m sure you’ll be a great father.”  
  
The hug that followed was just as awkward. The only thing worse for Jim was going back home to an empty apartment.   
  
The routine started to feel heavy. It didn’t energize him anymore. Jim slept on the sofa, trying not to notice that the hole in his life didn’t have anything to do with Carol being gone. He loved Carol, and would always think of her fondly, but the real problem was that he just couldn’t stop loving Bones.   
  
It had been a dangerous game, allowing him to fall back into it.   
  
Thanksgiving came and went, so did Chanukah, St. Patrick’s Day, and Passover. He wasn’t really sure where the time has gone, especially not when each individual day felt so long.   
  
Then Bones called him. Jim didn’t hesitate to answer that phone, didn’t pause or falter. He just flipped it open and forewent any sort of appropriate greeting. “What’s up?” Jim asked, still going through the mail sitting on his counter. He didn’t think anything of the long pause, until he heard the sigh. “Bones, is everything okay?”  
  
“It’s my dad.” Len was a wreck on the tail end a 24-hour shift, trying to put the situation into words that could translate over the phone. “He was rushed into Grady. God, Jim.”  
  
All Jim wanted to do was reach out over those stupid cell lines and hug him. “Is your dad okay?”   
  
“He’s sick. He has ALS. It’s been rough for a while, but today he lost the ability to swallow and it’s just not looking good. My mom is a wreck, Joce –” Len cut himself off, knowing he could have called Jocelyn from the parking lot just as easy as he called Jim. Their names were right next to each other on his contact list. Only he hadn’t wanted to talk with Jocelyn. “I don’t know what to do, Jim. He’s just in so much pain and he knows…can you even-”  
  
“Hey, Bones, Breathe. Okay, just for a moment, all I want you to do is breathe.” In the big scheme of things this amounted to absolutely nothing. And yet it was all he had to give. “Alright, now, tell me, what can I do? How do I make this better? Do you want me to come out to Atlanta?” Even as he asked the question a part of him stuttered – maybe that wasn’t the thing to say.  
  
“You can’t do that,” said Bones sounding far too small.  
  
“I might be able to, I have some time. It would help, right? I could help, being there?”  
  
“Jim,” he said finally after what felt like forever and not long enough. “You can’t. You have things you have to do and I have people here and you can’t just drop everything because...”  
  
“What if I wanted to?”   
  
It wasn’t hope. He wouldn’t call it that – neither of them would because that would be naming something fragile that still hung between them.   
  
“Then I’m not going to stop you.” He sighed. “Hey, look I should get going, got people at home waiting.”  
  
“Yeah, okay, take care, Bones. We’ll talk soon.”  
  
It was Jim’s turn to sigh as he hung up the phone. He really didn’t have the time, but could find it. He would just have to talk to his commanding officer tomorrow and they could work something out. He didn’t even have to be gone long.   
  
It could work. He could do this.  
  
Two days later as he was sitting in the airport, boarding pass in hand for Atlanta, when he got the phone call he had been waiting weeks for. It was the order to report to his final interview for the Test Pilot posting.   
  
“Is there any way we could reschedule the interview?”   
  
“Lieutenant Kirk, I trust you are aware of how competitive the posting is and while we do grant leniency for extenuating circumstances, it is not typically well received.”  
  
“Yeah, okay, I understand.”  
  
“I’ll be sending along your orders in a few minutes.”  
  
“Thanks,” he said hanging up. Jim leaned back in the chair staring at the slowly emptying airport lounge. His flight must have started to board.   
  
Agency, it was a good thing until there was suddenly too much of it and right now he didn’t want it.   
  
Jim sighed pulling his phone back into his line of sight, starring at it like it held the secrets o the universe, although he would settle for it just having the secrets of what he should do, but maybe…  
  
Powering back on his phone he called Gopher, because he would know, he always knew that was how things worked with them. Jim messed things up, and Christopher Pike made them just a little bit better.  
  
“Come on, come on.” Only the phone kept ringing. “Damn it, Gopher.”  
  
He felt as conflicted as he once did as a child, ready to flail out for attention. Only now he was too old to get away with that. Jim wasn’t sure how long he sat there, watching the rest of the plane board – go to Georgia and be with Bones or stay and show up for his interview?  
  
“I should have stuck to the plan.”


	5. Winter 2020

**One year later…**  
The funny thing was getting exactly what he wanted, wasn't really what he wanted at all. It was the little things that kept bringing him back. A bagel with peanut butter eaten as he ran out the door could put him in a mood all day. Or how he donated all of his hoodies, and pulled a face anytime someone mentioned Hawaii, because that where Lost was filmed.   
  
It had been a year since Jim made that choice – and barely a day had passed where he didn’t consider what he gave up. What initially felt like a full, happy sort of life, now felt like he was missing am arm or a leg.   
  
Jim didn’t know who he was anymore. And without something to define him, he threw himself into his training, pushing back more against what the instructors told him. He needed something that could consume him, and fill that void.   
  
That was about the time he earned his second nickname – Hotdog. Not that he responded to it, but he supposed it was fitting.   
  
It was his hot-dogging that landed in him all too regular meetings with his commanding officer, James Komack. He was a big, burly man, and it was hard to picture him as a younger, softer man who had done a few tours in the Middle East and had the scars to show for it.  
  
“Lieutenant Kirk, what do you have to say for yourself?”  
  
He sat up a bit straighter, trying to keep the smirk off his face. That was always a loaded sort of question. “That I was right?” He ventured because it wasn’t untrue.  
  
Komack cleared his throat, but otherwise remained unmoving. His hands were folded on the desk between them.  
  
“That I was right,  _sir._ ” Jim amended as if adding the ‘sir’ somehow made it better.  
  
“No. What you are is reckless. In the past week you scrubbed two training runs by going beyond the parameters and today you not only impaired a drone, but missed the trap, again, putting your bird out of service.”  
  
“I missed the trap because Lieutenant Finnegan’s left engine blew and he wasn’t going to be able to land on his own, so I provided landing assistance.”  
  
“And why did his left engine blow?”  
  
Jim slouched in the chair. “The drone was impaired.”  
  
“The drone was impaired because of actions you took.”  
  
The two fell into a long silence. Even being dressed down by a commanding officer, Jim didn’t flinch or look away. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to break first.   
  
Komack reached over and opened Kirk’s service jacket. “So, here is my dilemma, you’re a great pilot. You have a natural sort of ability with any craft you’re given and you test off the charts, but you keep blowing basic missions.”  
  
“That’s because the missions don’t reflect how any of these crafts operate in the field!”   
  
“Because you don’t seem to respect the chain of command,” he said raising his voice to speak over Jim. “You’re not the only one who has flew during wartime and you might not like it be was have standard operating procedures for a reason.  
  
“So, what I’m going to do is grant you four day liberty during which you are going to go, relax, clear that head, and when you come back all of this is going to be behind us because I don’t want to have to transfer you out.”   
  
That would bring the wrath of Winona down on the both of them. For other officers having your mother speak to your commanding officer wasn’t a good thing. The difference he was that Jim Kirk wasn’t other officers, he was a Kirk, and Winona was a powerful player in the armed services. It was both a blessing and a curse.   
  
“Understood, sir.” At least this time he managed to keep his voice a polite neutral.   
  
Four day leave – what the hell was he going to do with himself? Well, Jim knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to hop a plane to go see Bones, but he hadn’t really spoken to Bones since telling him he wasn’t going to make it over a year ago. He hadn’t even had gone when he learned that David McCoy passed away.   
  
Bones probably didn’t want to see him ever again.  
  
But there was Sam, who might no longer work for the CDC, but did still happen to live within a reasonable driving distance of Atlanta.   
  
Since Jim had come back from his first tour, he had a standing offer to crash in his brother’s spare bedroom whenever he wanted. There was something charming about the two story, four-bedroom house, nice backyard and good neighbors that appealed to him. It was a world away from the near-industrial apartments that he cycled between. Not that those places were bad, they just served a different sort of person.   
  
This was a place that when Jim came, homework became a forgotten thought while Peter and George competed for his attention. It was days full of games and watching ‘really cool tricks’ that were tame in comparison. Peter was super excited about the things he could do with his scooter, whereas Jim stole his father’s car and drove it over a cliff. So really a scrapped knee was nothing compared to nearly dying.   
  
And he absolutely loved it – coming here was like a year round sort of summer camp, but with better room and board, and less children to worry about. Although bedtime was still a challenge.  
  
“Alright boys, time to go get ready for bed.”  
  
“But mom.”  
  
“But Peter,” she repeated, not budging. Aurelan might only be a Kirk in name, but she certainly knew how to handle the Kirk boys. “Uncle Jim will be here in the morning. And do you ever think that maybe he wants a break from you?”  
  
“Who me? Never!” Jim shouted, definitely choosing Peter’s side on this one and enjoying the opportunity to rile Aurelan a little. “I would actually want them to stay up all night, running around like monkeys, and eating candy.”  
  
She turned and glared at him. “And just for that you’re getting the cheap beer.”  
  
“Hey!”   
  
“You made your own bed. Now lay in it.”  
  
Jim looked to Sam for back up and he just shrugged. “Traitor!”  
  
“You never bet against the wife. That’s the first thing they teach you. Come on, let’s go get you some cheap beer.”   
  
The two brothers made their way into the kitchen as Aurelan finally wrangled the kids upstairs.  
  
“Those are some kids you have there.”  
  
Sam smiled, that same stupid, but so in love, smile Jim remembered seeing when he had first told Jim that he was going to be a dad. He didn’t say anything, but just handed Jim a bottle of PBR.   
  
“God, why do you even buy this stuff?”  
  
“Oh, I only buy it for you because when we were younger this was all you asked for.”  
  
“That’s because I was 17 and had no money! I have grown since then. I drink far better beer now.”  
  
“Sure you do,” he said taking a pull from his bottle. “You should get one.”  
  
Jim’s face scrunched in confusion. “Get one?”  
  
“A kid, a family – whatever you want to call it, because you’re good with them.”  
  
“That’s because I get to come in every couple of months, spoil them rotten, and leave.”  
  
“Nah, I think you’d be good with all the other parts too. I mean, hell, you worked at a summer camp for years. Don’t tell me you don’t want a family some day.”  
  
Jim looked down at his bottle, starting to peel at the label. “That was part of the plan.”  
  
Sam laughed. “Ah, yes, the elusive plan. How is that working out for you?”  
  
It was that laugh, the mocking older brother sort, that made Jim just want to punch him and he did have a few pounds and plenty of PT over Sam so it wasn’t going to be a fair fight. Instead Jim just threw the bottle cap at him. “Fuck you too.”  
  
Sam stopped laughing then. “Alright, seriously now, what’s going on, Jim?”  
  
That was another loaded question and he wasn’t sure if Sam really wanted the full answer. Or really Jim wasn’t sure if he wanted to try to explain the whole thing. Not that he needed to, for whatever horrible twist of the universe it came down to one simple point.   
  
“How did you know that Aurelan was the one you wanted to be with?”  
  
“You don’t ever really know, and even then you can still get hurt. I mean look at mom and dad.”  
  
It wasn’t something they ever really talked about. The late George Kirk was always the ghost in the room, the lack of his presence putting a strange pressure on their childhood. Winona had tried to be a good mother. She had wanted to take on the world, not raise a family. She had needed George for that part. It was only after her children had started to grow that she was able to be there for them in a more meaningful way. Only then had she really started to move on with her life.  
  
“Yeah, losing dad nearly destroyed mom, I’ve heard the story,” said Jim. “But we’re not talking about that. I’m talking about  _you_.”  
  
“Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s just a feeling, something that was there even when I wasn’t looking. She’s good for me and has never asked me to be anything that other than what I am. Really, she’s just been there, just like I’m there for her. Shit, it’s not easy, and I think we’ve just been lucky that we haven’t hated each other at the same time.”   
  
Jim smirked a little at that thought. Maybe this love stuff didn’t have to epic. Maybe it just came down to was want, and being on opposing schedules. He and Bones certainly had that part figured out. Jim didn’t say any of that. Instead he just finished his beet, but Sam already knew.  
  
“You’re not staying, are you?”  
  
“I have to go see someone about this feeling.”  
  
The how of he ended up just outside Atlanta was pretty obvious. The why and what he expected to find when he got there was a bit more complicated. It was almost as complicated as tricking Chapel into telling him where Len lived now without her telling Len about it. The woman meddled, but unlike some others, Jim knew she meant well.   
  
Complicated as things could be and unsure of what would happen, not once did he think about turning back. He wanted this. He wanted Bones. Of course that was enough to make him sick.   
  
All right, so maybe a little bit of that certainty was leaving him now because that was Bones’s house.   
  
It was a beautiful house with a nice wrap around porch and a picket fence – an honest to goodness picket fence. Jim expected that any moment a dog might come running around the front or that he would hear a horse because those looked like stables around the back.  
  
Really, had Bones ever mentioned owning horses and actually being like some country doctor, who just happened to be a chief resident at Emory? The guy had it all.  
  
“Oh God, this is a mistake. He doesn’t need me.” He leaned forward against the steering wheel, pressing his eyes closed.   
  
He sat there for a moment, feeling like he was at the same point he was at almost a year ago, but at least this time he made it out of the airport. Now, he was sitting in a driveway, half hoping that no one was home.   
  
Up in the house, the whole family was home and there was a curious child peeking out the window. Her hair was all in knots that had started off as braids with little fingers pressing against the glass, leaving smudges.  
  
“Daddy, why is there is a car just sitting outside?”  
  
Len looked up from the blocks he was apparently playing with alone, his daughter having abandoned him to look out the window. “There’s a man in the car too, and he doesn’t look so good.”  
  
“What do you mean?” He pushed himself onto his feet and walked across to peer out the window behind her.   
  
Len wasn’t expecting any guests. He didn’t recognize the car, but even at a distance he knew that man.   
  
“Daddy?” said Joanna asked after her dad had been quiet too long. “Do you know who that is?”  
  
“I do, that’s Jim. He’s an old friend I lived with when I was at school.”  
  
Not that it was quite so clean, but she was still young and that was easiest answer to give. It wasn’t appropriate to try to explain to a four year old that the man sitting in the car was his first serious long-term relationship and someone he had once thought was ‘it’ for him.   
  
“Do you want to meet him?”  
  
She nodded vigorously and turned around so she could be picked up. Len grabbed her, placing her on his hip as walked to the front door. He only took them as far as the porch.  
  
“So,” he said yelling down the yard, “You just going to sit there like some 'stranger danger' or are you going to remember your manners?”  
  
Jim jerked upward, hitting his head on visor. His head turned toward the porch, not really minding the physical pain all that much because that was quite the sight to see.   
  
There was Len in a pair of well-worn jeans, a Harvard Medical shirt, and perhaps the most beautiful kid he had ever seen. And as a long-standing summer camp employee, Jim knew all different types of kids and considered himself something of an expert.   
  
Finally he pulled himself together and got out of the car. He was an officer. He should at least be able to get the basics of being a human being right.   
  
“Is that Joanna?”  
  
Len nodded, a soft smile on his face. If Jim’s stomach wasn’t doing kick-punches he might have thought he had died and this was some sort of heaven.  
  
“Jim, this is Joanna, Joanna this is your daddy’s friend, Jim.”  
  
She was wiggling now, and Len finally took that as a sign to let her down. He wasn’t surprised when she ran, barefoot, across the yard to get closer to Jim and stare up at them.   
  
“Are you okay, Mr. Jim, because you didn’t look so good?”  
  
Bold as she was, she could still be polite. Len wasn’t sure where she got it, but it never ceased to amaze him.   
  
Jim knelt, so they were at the same level – summer camp 101 right there. “I think I’ll be okay, I just did a lot of traveling this morning and am feeling a little tired.”  
  
“Daddy is tired a lot too, because he is a doctor who helps sick people and has to work a whole lot. Are you a doctor too?”  
  
He laughed, glancing up over at Bones, who hadn’t moved from his spot on the porch. “No, I'm not a doctor. I fly planes for the United States Air Force – do you know what that is?”  
  
“Like the army?”  
  
“A little bit.”  
  
She screwed up her face, deep in concentration, trying to make sense of everything. She really was just like her father. “Does that mean you kill people?”   
  
That was not a question he was expecting and not something he knew how to answer when his peers asked, let alone a four-year-old. To them he would explain his period of deployment as a sort of deflection. It wasn’t that he ignored that part of his job or pretended it didn’t exist. It was sort of a necessary evil and he tried not to think on it too much.  
  
“Joanna,” Len called, saving Jim from a tricky situation. “Could go back inside to play so I can talk to Jim alone for a minute?”  
  
The little girl glared up at her father on the porch, weighing the request. “And later we’re still going to the park like you promised?”  
  
“Of course.”   
  
“Okay.” And with the same energy, she had run across the house before she ran back inside, throwing her hand up in a rushed farewell to Jim.  
  
“So,” said Len.  
  
“So.”  
  
“You’re in Atlanta.”  
  
“I’m in Atlanta.” Jim tucked his hands into the back pockets of jeans. When had the simple act of conversation become so difficult?  
  
“Don’t you live out in California?”  
  
“Yeah, I’m at Edwards now.”  
  
“Then what brings you all the way out here?”  
  
It wasn’t really a question because there was only one reason why Jim would travel to Atlanta. They both knew it, but it was the last question that could be asked before the floodgates opened and words were shared or they stood standing there like idiots staring at each other. Not that they weren’t already idiots staring at each other. There would just be no denying now.   
  
“I –” Jim started and stopped. On the porch Len lurched forward, wanting to bridge that little insignificant distance between them. Only they didn’t do that anymore and it hurt. “ _Bones._ ”  
  
The whole thing hurt, but for Jim it would hurt more to not try and say something. Besides he was one to leap without looking. He scratched the back of his head before he started again.   
  
“I need to say something and you just need to listen and not talk until I’m all the way through, can you do that?”  
  
Finally Len sat down on the porch swing and silently invited Jim to join up. “Go ahead then.”  
  
Focusing on breathing in and out, Jim walked up onto the porch, leaning against the porch rail, which was the safer option than the swing next to Bones.   
  
“Alright,” he said in a long exhale. “Here’s the thing. You know how we talked about the difference between being happy and not being unhappy at the camp reunion?” He paused for just a moment because he didn’t want to linger on how he blew it then.  
  
“Well, I think that’s stupid – settling for not being unhappy. I know that if we tried to make this work, make us work, we could happy. It wouldn’t be perfect or even wonderful every day, and this is probably seven years too late, but I love you, Bones. I have never stopped loving you and I don’t want to pretend that it’s not there anymore. I thought I had everything I wanted, but I didn’t. And trust me I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s how I feel. Yes, our lives are on different coasts right now, and it’s not logical or any number of things, but I want to be with you.”  
  
Jim looked up filled with a fragile, hesitant sort of hope. He didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t this. Bones just sat there with a careful, neutral,  _professional_  expression on his face. For a long moment neither of them spoke and everything lay in that piling silence between them.   
  
And Jim wanted to be sick all over again.  
  
“I’m too late, aren’t I? You’re married, you married her, which of course you would because you have a beautiful daughter and it was stupid to think you wouldn’t.”  
  
“We’re not married. We’re engaged. Kind of.” he said, like that small correction changed anything. “I asked her a few months back, but we’re not making any real plans until I know where my fellowship will be.”  
  
It was then his tone changes from the doctor delivering bad news to the man who might also have a heart that was breaking a little. “I’m sorry, Jim.”  
  
Jim could only chuckle dryly. It was either that or cry and his manliness couldn’t take that much of an attack today. “Don’t be sorry. I mean you’re happy, you seem happy, actually happy with the mother of your child and that’s great, Bones. I’m happy for you, really. You should be happy, you should have it all.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And really, I should go.”  
  
“Or you could stay.” It made Jim pause for just a second, hearing all that could be wrapped up on four words, but no matter what he heard in them it’s far too complex. And he didn’t know how much longer he could keep it together.   
  
“No, it’s fine,” he said already making his retreat back across the lawn to his rental car. “Today is probably your only day off and I know you don’t get those often, or probably at all and you should spend it with your family.”  
  
Len said nothing. He was stuck in his place on the porch watching Jim escape from his life. God, his heart fractured just a little thinking this might be a last time. You can only bend something so far before it would break. And as Jim flashed a watery smile with a fleeting, “See you around, Bones,” he felt broken.   
  
He had put Jim Kirk behind him, tucked him away into that careful place in his heart where he could remember, but not have it hurt every time. It wouldn’t last forever, because the cracks were still there, but he and Jocelyn were good, they had found a way to make it work and he was happy.  
  
Behind him the front door to the house opened. “Len?” Her voice was gentle, also taking him back to a lifetime ago. They had a history too. She placed a hand on his shoulder, open concern clear on her face. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah, just thinking is all.” He turned around to see her, still just was beautiful as the first time he saw her. Maybe they were epic too.   
  
“About anything specific?”  
  
“No, I’m good. I just saw someone I didn’t think I was going to see again.”  
  
“Alright.” She kissed him on the cheek and he couldn’t help but smile at her. “If everything is okay, Jojo wants to know if we can go to the park now.”  
  
“Yeah, sure, that sounds great.”  
  
It was a good life. He was happy, he had never doubted until right now. Leave it to Jim Kirk to have the perfect timing to turn his world upside down. It was whiplash all over again. 


	6. Summer & Fall 2020

**Sixth months later…**  
The day started innocently enough. Weekend morning rounds were uneventful and the younger residents had the floor under control, which meant that Len was able to make it home for lunch. Even if Joanna had plans to spend the day with Jessica from school, it would be nice to sit down and have a meal with Jocelyn.  
  
After lunch, Len had gone into his study to catch up on a few articles he had been meaning to review while Jocelyn headed outside to start work on their garden. Really it was any average domestic sort of day.   
  
The problem with days that start off innocently enough was that they always seemed to find ways to suddenly become complicated.  
  
Really, he had just been looking for an old Neurosurgery journal from his med school days when he came across a shoebox. (‘Memory box, Bones, it’s for keeping memories and you should have one.’) While thoughts of its giver were seldom far from his mind, especially after the impromptu visit a few months ago, Len rarely thought of this box that held clues to some of the best moments of his life.  
  
Maybe at another time he might have just left the box where it sat, but not today.  
  
Len opened the box that was filled with scraps of paper and little trinkets. In there was the toy skeleton Jim had given him as his first secret buddy gift, officially christening him as Bones, along with a few faded friendship bracelets that he kept once they had fallen off. Most it was letters and notes passed between that at Camp Enterprise, but also a good number of those little post its left on pillows or on kitchen counters during their time in Boston.  
  
It was a snap shot of whole other life together in that box. One that maybe should have stayed wrapped up because it was easier that way – not that he could ever just put it in a box and forget about it.  
  
Then there was  _that_  letter. In an unassuming 4 1/8 x 9 1/2 envelope was the one note had never read. The only hint to what it contained was Jim’s chicken scratch that passed for handwriting labeling it “The Plan.” Jim had shoved it into his pocket just before he boarded the Texas bound plane and their lives officially diverged.  
  
Except that wasn’t true at all. He and Jim still orbited each other. They were still bound together just more in an eccentric stretched out orbit like Pluto and maybe it was past time to get a little bit closer to the sun.  
  
So, he finally opened the letter.

> Dear Bones,
> 
> The way I see this going is that you’re either going to read this letter right now or tuck it away and forgot about it for years. Knowing you, I’m going to guess the latter is true. In fact I’m sort of counting on it and you know also hoping that what I’m writing here isn’t just a load of bullshit.
> 
> I meant what I said about the plan, that today we go our own ways and make something of ourselves in the world. I have no doubt that in seven years you’ll be on your way to being one of the best neurosurgeons in the country. Hopefully I won’t be dead or too messed up from the Air Force and NASA will have gotten their act together to start needing pilots again. To which, I still think you would make a great flight surgeon, although I suppose that’s just selfish and small game for you.
> 
> But I guess here’s the point. Whatever happens happens and I think for a while it’s going to hurt and that’s okay – and it won’t even be that different from the past couple of months. Although I need to say that I don’t think is over for us yet, it doesn’t feel over, and I don’t think it will ever fully happen because for whatever reason you just stick. You have always stuck. 
> 
> So, I’m serious, when you’re finished your training to be a doctor and you don’t have a ring on your finger, I’m coming for you, Bones. Hell, even if you do have a ring on your finger, I might still be coming for you – consider this a very fair warning.
> 
> This is goodnight, but not goodbye.
> 
> \-- Jim

  
He must have read the letter at least four times, wondering what if he came across this at a different point in his life. All he could remember was the look of absolute heartbreak as he watched Jim drive away six months ago.  
  
“You’re taking the fellowship in California.” It wasn’t a question, and it certainly wasn’t even a greeting or even a reference to a prior conversation they had at any length. All Len had said about the matter was that UCLA made him a great offer, but there was a position for him at Grady if he wanted that too.   
  
Except Jocelyn was telling him now.  
  
“It’s just…“ He started and then stopped. Len wasn’t sure what he could say when she already knew him better that he knew himself. In some regards she always would because their lives orbiting around each other too.  
  
Jocelyn walked across the room and sat herself down next to him on the floor, mindful not to disturb the trinkets and bits of paper around him. "You still love him, don't you?"  
  
And that was the other thing they didn’t really talk about since Jim had shown up.  
  
Len sighed. It wasn't a fair question to ask because he never lied to her about Jim and he wasn’t going to start now. She knew who Jim Kirk was, what he meant to him, but they both recognized it was something in their past. Leonard McCoy made his choice. That was what the ring on her finger stood for, the fact they - Len and Joce - were the ones about to get the future.  
  
Or at least that had been their plan.  
  
"I thought I was done, and that part my of life was over, but it’s not." He deflated as the words came out. Len would have liked to say that applying to the fellowship in California was a mistake, but it was a great fit for him professionally and if that put him closer to Jim…well, that was just a complicated side effect.  
  
Jocelyn put her hand on his back. “You know he’s only going to break your heart over and over again.” She wasn’t bitter, and everything she was saying was true. Every time Jim had passed through his life since Boston, it left him a little shattered and Jocelyn was there to collect the pieces. “But I know you, you will have this hope that maybe this time it could be okay, that maybe this time you get to keep him despite all of your past mistakes."  
  
“Yeah, it’s kind of like that.” It was only then he was able to look away from the letter still in his hand to Jocelyn. And for a moment it easy to imagine how their life could have worked.  
  
Len would stay, take the attending position at Grady, be a father, and get to spend the rest of his life with his oldest friend. He would have been happy. He had no doubt in that.   
  
“Hey, I love you, you know that, right?” The words had never before been said to her like an apology. “And God, I wish that me loving you was enough because you make me happy, but…”  
  
But the problem was that she was his best friend and she knew him. Even if it would hurt her, she had to let him have what he wanted.  
  
“Len, don’t.” She dropped her hand onto her lap, her voice still gentle. “It’s okay, well no, it’s not okay, but it can be, but it is going to hurt.” His words had been an apology and hers were a promise.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“I know you are.” Jocelyn removed the ring from her finger and held it out to him. “Go, I give you permission to take the fellowship in California.”  
  
Len looked up at her, for the first time not sure who the woman was looking back at him. Yes, she was still the girl he fell in love with as a kid, but she was something all together new. He didn’t say anything, just wrapped her hand back around the ring in her fingers that he didn’t have any plans for. “Keep it, it’s your ring even if we’re not getting married anymore.”  
  
And that was where their story ended and the next chapter of his life began.   
  
Los Angeles was overwhelming and a little frightening. It was big, busy and filled with people who had this sort of way about them that Len didn’t understand. He was learning it was a place where accents went to die, all except his, which only seemed thicker now.  
  
During his first two weeks settling into what truly was the fellowship of a lifetime, he was sure that he had made another mistake in a life full of poor decisions. Len missed Georgia something terrible. He missed his daughter and all the trappings of a life he created back on the east coast.  
  
Even for someone who loved neurosurgery, and you had to love it to have survived residency, it wasn’t quite the same. The game had gone from a piece in his good life to really the only thing holding it all together. More than once, he needed to remind himself that ALS took his father, could one day take him, but right now he had the ability to start finding solutions and viable forms of treatment.   
  
And when things got really bad there was Christine Chapel to fall back on. Of course it was also partly her fault that he was out here anyway.  
  
“Finally,” she said dropping down into the chair across from him. “I thought you have been avoiding me and I was starting to get a complex.”  
  
“Christine, you’ve been just as busy as I’ve been and it’s not like I walk the other way when I see you. We work in the same department.” He said passed a cup of coffee across the table for her. It was hazelnut with a splash of milk, just the way she liked it.  
  
“You have yet to request me on one of your surgeries,” she said before taking a sip of coffee.  
  
“I haven’t even been here a month, I need to get a feel for the staff. There very well could be a better scrub nurse than you here.”  
  
“And for that you’re going to have to ask so very nicely when you request me for your trial surgical team.”  
  
Christine Chapel was always something else. He had only the opportunity to work with her in an operating room once, but from what he saw and heard, he knew she was good - if not the best damn scrub nurse the hospital had.  
  
She was also trouble as most blonds in his life were.  
  
“Alright, so spill.”  
  
“What exactly am I spilling?”  
  
“Well, you were engaged to be married, living and I quote ‘quite happily’ in Georgia with your daughter and her mother. And now you’re thousands of miles away in LA, there has to be something there beyond it being the best fellowship imaginable and finally getting to work with me again.”  
  
Len sighed, taking a sip of his of coffee. “It’s complicated is all.”  
  
“Off sponge count complicated? Jocelyn having an affair with a woman or secretly a vampire complicated?” He glared at her. “Or you’re still in love with Jim complicated?”  
  
Rather than dignify that with a response he crossed his arms over his chest.  
  
“Okay, so Jim Kirk complicated.” He didn’t say anything, but she didn’t invite him to either. “Goodness, I still don’t understand why the two of you even called it off in the first place. You know I lost a lot of money on that one because I had that one of you would pop the question by the graduation. And no, we really don’t have anything better to do with our time, even as adults, than to imagine the epic romance of the Captain and Bones.”  
  
Len huffed, letting all of the air out. There was the word again: epic - spanning years, heartbreak, lives ruined. Jim might have been just saying things, but it suited them, didn’t it?  
  
“Between the lot of us, it is a wonder that even one of those  _epic_  camp romances stood the test of time.” He had certainly witnessed more than he wanted to see in the boathouse or heard the not so concealed references in the good job jar.  
  
“Oh, Len, there was nothing epic about Spock and Nyota, like at all. They just were. I mean you wouldn't say that salt and pepper are epic.”  
  
“And Jim and I were?”  
  
Now it was Christine’s turn to not say anything. All she had to do was stare him down. It took balls to do, and Christine was probably one of the few able to pull it off.  
  
“Okay we were. We still are. And it doesn’t hurt any that he’s only a two hour drive away.”  
  
“And you still love him.”  
  
“Yes,” he said with that sort of warning tone.   
  
“So what are you going to do? Does he even know that you’re out here? Are you guys-”  
  
“Leave it alone, or I’m going to make sure that all the interns know to ask for you exclusively.”  
  
“Consider it dropped,” she said throwing up her hands “But you should at least give him a call and let him know not only are you not married but you sort of moved to LA for him.”  
  
For the next month, Len would find excuses not to call Jim. He would log into Facebook, stare at Jim’s page and talk himself out of sending him a message. That was about as a pathetic form of non-communication he could get. Every time he thought it might be a good idea, he found something else he could be doing.   
  
And of course just because Christine said it was dropped didn’t mean a damn thing. Instead the price of requesting Christine for his OR was updates on the status of his love life. Or rather the sad lack and mockery it had become. At least she had the sense to not seek after those in any sort of professional setting.   
  
She had become invested in getting them together.   
  
It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything better to do, being a nurse could be just as exhausting as being a neurosurgeon, and outside of work she had a family of her own to worry after. (Okay that family might just have been Roger and their dog, but it was still family.) Except that since his move, Len had more formally become part of that family. And maybe she too thought about Jim Kirk more than she should.   
  
She just didn’t expect to actually see him when she went to the jeweler to have the band on her watch fixed. Roger had offered to come along with her and they had decided to make a day of it.   
  
“Oh shit!” She said, turning around so her back was to Jim Kirk and the woman she could only assume was his mother.  
  
“Chris? What’s wrong?”  
  
“Across the display there – don’t look! – is Jim Kirk. I said don’t look!”  
  
“And why am I not looking at this man?”  
  
“Because I know him and Leonard McCoy is in love with him.” Roger scrunched up his face and all Christine could do was swat at him, before moving them discretely down the counter so she could overhear what they were talking about.   
  
Jim Kirk still looked good. Not that she would expect anything less, the man had always been something of an Adonis and all those years in the Air Force with the required fitness standards only served to fill him out more.  
  
The woman he was with, definitely his mother from how similar the pair looked, looked like she could hold her own too.   
  
“I can’t believe that the wedding bands still haven’t been finished,” she said leaning against the glass case, relaxing her posture.   
  
“Yeah, well, for the special engravings it was going to take a bit longer and it just had to be perfect.”  
  
The woman laughed, shaking her head, catching Jim in the headlights. “What?” he asked.   
  
“I just never expected to hear you so serious about  _marriage_.”  
  
“Well, this is a very serious thing.”  
  
“You better be saying that. It is on Saturday.”  
  
“No backing out now.”  
  
“Definitely not.”  
  
Christine froze. Jim Kirk was getting married. How was she ever going to be able to tell Len? After everything, they were both too late.   
  
For the first time in a long time, Christine was not looking forward to heading into work. She was even less excited about the likely full day with Len in the operating room she had ahead of her.   
  
The man could smell a lie from a mile away. And he kept giving her those looks every time he asked for an instrument or wanted something removed from the field.   
  
Six hours felt like three times that, until he finally finished up and started to de-gown. “Nurse Chapel, come see me in my office when you’re finished with our patient,” said Len before leaving the room.  
  
So, if she took a bit longer to check and double check the patient’s transfer back to the floor, well, that was just because she wanted their second trial patient to have a good outcome.   
  
“Just come in all ready, and shut the door behind you,” he said catching her lingering just outside of his office. Christine shuffled in, plopping into the seat on the other side of his desk. “What is it?”  
  
There was probably a better way to say it, but it all just came out.   
  
“Jim Kirk is getting married on Saturday.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Christine repeated herself saying each word slower than before.   
  
“Damn it, Chris, I heard you the first time. It’s just eight months ago, he showed up in my driveway telling me that we should be together and now he’s getting married? That’s just bullshit if I’ve seen it before.”  
  
“Maybe he’s moved on. He was out picking up the rings with his mom and he looked excited, happy even.” She watched Len shrink backward in his chair. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but maybe it’s time you’ve moved on too.”  
  
She was right. He didn’t want to hear it because he still couldn’t accept that Jim Kirk was getting married and without even telling him about it? Sure, Len hadn’t exactly told Jim when he proposed to Jocelyn, but this was different.   
  
It was a slight abuse of power, but like some crazed fool, the next day he decided that the first intern to find out where the Kirk wedding was happening this weekend could observe on his next surgery.   
  
Not that when Dr. Kendra White gave him all the information it settled him any. It was almost worse because now he had a name – Pince. What kind of last name was Pince?   
  
Unlike all the times before when he couldn’t even go through with calling Jim, he wasn’t looking for excuses now. Len traded a few favors and made sure that he would be off the schedule for Friday night unless it was an absolute emergency.   
  
All through grand rounds and his consults on Friday he was distracted. There was a nervous sort of energy to him. Len had wanted to leave after lunch, go home, shower, put on non-hospital clothes and feel like an actual human being when he crashed Jim’s rehearsal dinner.   
  
Instead he had to scrub in on an emergency spine trauma and horrible as it was, it was perhaps the only time in his life he didn’t immediately curse himself when the patient coded on the table.   
  
So, Len settled for a quick shower at the hospital. He changed back into his office clothes, fit grey trousers, a white collared shirt, but opted to not put the tie back on. It wasn’t quite the human feeling he wanted, but it wasn’t entirely frantic either.   
  
On the drive over to the hotel, Len tried to convince himself that there was some class to crashing the rehearsal dinner as opposed to the actual ceremony. That would just be overly dramatic.  
  
“I’m here for the Kirk-Pince rehearsal dinner,” was enough to get him directed toward the private function room. Len got as far as the door when he saw Jim talking animatedly with a gorgeous red-haired woman. His eyes were even doing that crinkle thing that he had once thought was only for him.   
  
That was when the bottom fell out, a sick nauseated feeling surging over him. This time he was way too late. Jim was happy. Jim had moved on, maybe Chapel was right. Maybe he should too.   
  
Turning to go, he turned head first into a waiter sending a serving tray of drinks up and right down crashing to the floor. So much for a stealthy exit.   
  
Everyone in the function room paused, all eyes tracking to the commotion just outside. And for just a fleeting moment his eyes met with Jim’s. As bad as it was before, now Len just wanted to die.   
  
Scrambling to his feet he turned to go. “Bones?” Len ignored the voice, focusing on getting to the door. He needed to get out. He couldn’t see Jim happy right now, because he knew wouldn’t be able to be the bigger man.   
  
“Bones!” said Jim running out after him. “What are you doing here?”   
  
Before he had a chance to escape, Jim grabbed Len by the arm forcing him to stop. Their eyes met again and Len felt sick all over again. How did he ever think this was ever a good idea?   
  
“I don’t know,” said Len, trying to shake free of Jim. “And it just – it doesn’t really matter.”   
  
“Bones?” The name came with bright eyes and just a pinch of something he wanted to call vulnerability.   
  
“I work at UCLA.”  
  
“You have a job at UCLA?”  
  
Len sighed. “That’s what I said.”   
  
“What about Jocelyn and Joanna?”  
  
“What about them?” He was barely able to handle facing Jim right now. He didn’t need to air the heartbreak of leaving Georgia all over again, especially now that it was worse. God, he was the idiot who moved across the country for a guy and the guy didn’t even want him anymore!   
  
“You were getting married.”  
  
“Yeah, so are you!” He threw up his hands, feeling far too exposed which meant a transition to attack mode. And for once Jim didn’t seem to have anything to say, so Len just let the words rain down. “Only now I’m not getting married because I’m still not over loving you, to the point that Jocelyn essentially gave me her blessing to move out to California because you’re out at Edwards and God damn it you’re getting married! She said you were only going to break my heart and she was right…”  
  
Wherever the rant was going, neither of them would ever know. It was that moment that Jim decided to employ the only method that ever successfully worked in shutting Len up. He kissed him.  
  
It was just one kiss, pulling the words and the fire out of his lips and into something else. Len threw his arms around Jim, pressing them closer. Even if this was their last kiss and this was goodbye, he wanted it to be good. He needed to be able to remember their last kiss.   
  
After a moment that was both too long and never quite long enough, Jim pulled back with the sound of laughter on his lips and that crinkle in his eyes.   
  
“Bones, my mom is getting married.”  
  
Len stumbled over his words the first couple of times he tried to respond, his brain hadn’t been ready for that possibility. “Winona is getting married?”  
  
“Yes,” he said chasing that word with a kiss. Bones wasn’t done loving him.   
  
The responding ‘oh’ was lost in that kiss so much better than the one previous because this one wasn’t hinted with the possibility of goodbye. This was a first, screaming ‘hello, love you, I never should have left you.’  
  
“So, what do you say? You and me go out for drinks and see what happens?”  
  
Len snorted, rolling his eyes. “Or we could just cut to the chase.”  
  
“Yeah we could definitely do that.” Jim wrapped his arms tighter around Len, not caring about the stray looks they were getting from hotel guests walking by.   
  
“You know, my sublet is only goes through August.” It was a hesitant sort of question, said as more of fact.   
  
“Only minutes after realizing you still have a chance with me and you already want to move in.”   
  
Even if technically they hadn’t lived together the first year they were in Boston, they practically did anyway. It was just how things worked between them. Even when every instinct said ‘go slow,’ they both leaped.  
  
“The way I see is that we should have never moved out.”   
  
“Point.” Which earned Len another kiss – funny how heartfelt reunions made previous oppositions to public displays of affection not valid. “I hear there are some nice places to live in Palmdale we could start looking at.”   
  
Len didn’t even really know where that was, but it sounded like it wasn’t LA and that was good enough for him. “I think I could manage that.”   
  
They stood there for a while longer, just revealing in both being present.   
  
“Don’t you need to be back there?”   
  
“Nope, the only place I need to be is right here.”   
  
“Me too, Jim. Me too.”


End file.
